


Forgiveness and Permission

by Morbane



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M, Present Tense, Training, background Harry Hart/Lee Unwin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-05 01:37:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4160703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin's perspective on the candidates - which is not a static thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgiveness and Permission

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lynndyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/gifts).



Before the new candidates have even turned out the lights on their first night in their new quarters, the Kingsman agents are laying bets as to which ones Merlin will pick as favourites. It's a game he can't convince them to break off from, a kind of hazing of him in symmetry to his hazing of the men and woman they have chosen.

He aims to return the favour. One game is to praise candidates to their sponsors' faces in ways that are not praise at all, but that appeal to said sponsors' egos. (And for all that he respects his fellow agents, many of them have a hell of an ego.) "Got an eye for detail," he says of Hugo, to Hugo's sponsor Gawain, which is a way of pointing out that the young man's perfectionism is going to lead to panic under pressure. "Driven by his pride," he says to Arthur, of Charlie, when what he means is that Charlie is coasting on it, and that it is arrogance, and he says this in front of Galahad to see if Galahad will betray a smile.

He admits to Ector that Ector's candidate Nathaniel, a clever, decisive young man from York, has many of the characteristics he himself would have looked for in a candidate, and he feels safe doing so, because in a week, as predicted, the candidate washes out - he cannot keep up with the others in physical feats or weapons training, and he has a slight hearing difficulty that he has compensated for by guessing too quickly about what he hears. Merlin tries to be especially gentle in the exit interview. He doesn't want to let go of this one entirely; better to emphasise that there are other ways to be a knight.

After that elimination, the other agents refrain from teasing him about his preferred candidate for a little while, joking that his preference is the kiss of death. So Merlin only has himself to blame when Piers breaks a wrist on the obstacle course, and he finds himself unexpectedly disappointed. He thought he'd been balanced, by that point, on all the candidates, but it is like tossing a coin to make a decision, landing on tails, and finding he heartily wishes he's turned up the Queen instead.

At this point, he should have accurate predictions of all of the candidates' breaking points. Eggsy, for example, is particularly easy. He isn't brittle, like Charlie, nor does he telegraph his fear, like Roxy - she isn't afraid of much, but she could work on her poker face - but he craves praise. "Concentrate on your training," Merlin tells Eggsy, to keep him from hovering around Galahad's bed. "Make him proud." The effect is frankly Pavlovian, and Merlin is a little annoyed.

Should Eggsy make it through, it will be necessary to refocus his loyalty away from a particular knight, and onto the organization.

Arthur isn't helping. The head of Kingsman does not, of course, appear to initiates whose loyalty is not fully confirmed, but the things Merlin overhears Charlie say are depressingly similar to things Arthur has said to Merlin, and Merlin doubts that that is a coincidence.

He designs the parachuting test to solve this problem. Later, he decides it was successful on all particulars: it exposed further areas of development for Roxy; it eliminated Hugo, Digby, and Rufus in such a way as to save face for all of them; and, of course, it convinces Eggsy to rethink Kingsman's attitude to him.

But that's later.

The exact moment that Eggsy leans forward into Merlin's space, and Merlin leans around Eggsy to pull his ripcord and gloriously prove his point, he realises two things. First, that he has allowed himself to care far too much about this particular recruit's opinion, and second, that there is something very appealing about physical proximity to Eggsy.

Seeing Eggsy sprawled on the ground in front of him, astonished and vulnerable and _hopeful_ , doesn't help.

* * *

Merlin isn't the only one who gets to pick tests. It is Arthur, still sour about his pet candidate's performance on the train tracks, who selects the dog test. Merlin dislikes the dog test. However, he has to admire Arthur's strategising. This a test that Eggsy will not pass. Galahad would be quick to cry foul at any other method Arthur might use to weed Eggsy out, but not this one; he does not see the danger. Galahad, after all, passed the dog test.

By now, Merlin knows Eggsy much better than Galahad does.

That is not merely based on observation. It is also based on a little exercise that Merlin calls interrogation training. He puts it on each candidate's schedule - each at a different time - with just that label, and he holds it in a bare room with a table and a pair of comfortable chairs, and when he walks into the room, he takes a perverse pleasure in the tension and the fidgeting and the way the candidate visibly assesses his clipboard and clothing for possible implements of torture.

That isn't how it works. They talk. Merlin asks the candidates about themselves. Some ordinary questions, some weird ones, and some with implied political sensitivity, to keep the tension up.

After the first suspicious half-hour, he asks the candidates to tell him what they have learned about _him_.

In later sessions, they move onto exercises. Distractions; redirecting conversation; telling people what they want to hear; how to choose which lies to stick to, and which to waver on; and in the event that someone _is_ going to go after the newest Kingsman agent with a tire iron or a set of tweezers, how to choose the moment to 'break' and give up apparent information that their captors want to know.

Merlin is not a fan of breaking arms - showy threats and showier follow-through are more Galahad's style - but he knows how to use other people's ideas about torture against them.

In these sessions, Digby and Charlie are both good at keeping their stories straight, and their demeanours steady. Roxy is good at working in little incongruous pieces of information designed to lead an interrogator along false trails. Eggsy, possibly without even realising it, starts to flirt with him.

Merlin suspects that that is his own damned fault, because he impressed on all the candidates the importance of _give your interrogator what he wants_ , on at least some level - never let him doubt the power he holds - and Merlin quite enjoys Eggsy flirting with him. He likes what he has learned about Eggsy. He manages, or so he hopes, to avoid the temptation to tell Eggsy too much about himself.

After all, all good things must come to an end, and there is a larger purpose here.

* * *

Merlin dislikes the dog test, but it is Arthur's choice, and Merlin does not choose to object. Roxy is an excellent candidate. It is possible that, charmed as he is by Eggsy, he has cut the boy some slack or overlooked a flaw.

He knows that Roxy can survive and succeed, and when he hands her a gun and tells her to shoot her poodle, he knows that that will show in his tone, in his gesture. (Another disadvantage in this test, that will not occur to Galahad: there is a very great difference between being told to do a crazy thing by someone who trusts you, and whom you trust, and being told to do a crazy thing by someone with whom you entirely lack that rapport.)

Roxy looks at her dog, and looks at Merlin, and says quietly, "Why?"

Merlin raises his eyebrows. "Do you intend to question all orders you receive?"

Roxy holds steady, returns his rhetorical non-answer by being literal. "No."

He digresses. "Have you ever killed anyone, Roxy?"

"No," she says, an automatic answer, because he knows that she hasn't, and she knows that he knows.

"In the field," Merlin says, "the first time you kill someone will not be easy. Neither is this."

It isn't a water-tight line of reasoning, but he thinks it is plausible enough. It's obvious that this is a final test. Therefore, after passing it, she will be an agent - and she _will_ be expected to kill if so ordered.

She considers, and shoots, and her dog's ears flatten in distress at the close, sharp noise, and she looks at him with surprise and a little bit of hope - rather like Eggsy, just after Merlin pulled the parachute cord.

* * *

Arthur does not hold with sentimentality to dogs - or underdogs. Arthur also does not believe in letting people down easily. When Merlin shows Roxy in to Arthur's parlour - and Eggsy is nowhere to be seen - he suppresses a sigh. Bruised feelings will have consequences.

But it's Galahad's reaction that surprises him.

"I spoke to Eggsy this afternoon," Galahad tells him over the comm link, as they finish a final Kentucky briefing.

Were it not that Merlin has heard Galahad's voice in every possible stressful situation, Merlin might be relieved. Arthur's attitudes notwithstanding, a sponsor is the right person to debrief a failed candidate and refocus them on the future. But Galahad's tone, to Merlin, does not sound casual.

"Good," Merlin says mildly, playing the innocent anyway.

"I made a bit of a hash of it," Galahad admits. After a pause, he adds, "I was indiscreet."

"Galahad," Merlin prods, "what did you say to him?"

"I yelled at him. I tried to get him to see... everything I'd done for him. In Lee's name. How much that mattered to me." Galahad is starting to sound ashamed.

Merlin draws a breath deep enough to yell, himself, and lets half of it escape.

"Harry," he says. "You have a hell of a temper."

"I'm sorry."

"And you're always apologising for the wrong things."

Galahad doesn't respond. Merlin can imagine his expression: frustrated, but wary.

"He thinks the world of you, Galahad," Merlin says. "I'm sure it hurt just as much as you could have wanted, to hear that nothing you've done or said to him is actually about _him_."

"Ah."

Merlin knows that he is lashing out at Galahad out of an overextended sense of hurt on Eggsy's behalf. Galahad isn't the only one whose feelings are coming to the fore. But he remembers Lee's death just as well as Galahad does.

He remembers the awful pageantry of it - Galahad looking at Lee's dead body, turning to Merlin to apologise, as if Merlin's own shock at losing the agent he sponsored - and what Galahad owed Merlin for that shock, if indeed it was anything - could cover up Galahad's grief.

Such bizarre inauthenticity seems to have twisted and sublimated his grief from that moment on, as if anything Galahad felt or did were truly about forgiveness, or permission, granted by Merlin. But perhaps it is easier to bear a perceived debt to a live Kingsman than to a dead one.

Sometimes Merlin wonders if Galahad might feel less guilt over Lee's death if he had acted on his feelings for him. But Lee was married, and Galahad's code of honour prevented compromising that.

So much good it did. Merlin has concluded - surely Galahad has too - that Lee must have either known of Galahad's feelings, or reciprocated them, or both, to have sacrificed himself in such a way.

Or perhaps that's just Galahad's gift, neither wanted nor questioned, that people want to impress him, and make them proud of him.

Poor Lee, but, more immediately, poor Eggsy.

"I'll fix this mess," Merlin says now. "I'll speak to Eggsy. You deal with Valentine."

"Very well," Galahad says, and because he is first and foremost a Kingsman, Merlin knows he will put the task first.

* * *

When Galahad is shot, Merlin tries to keep the same priorities in mind.

He puts together some of the same clues as Eggsy; yet it's not entirely logic that causes him to wave Lancelot down. It is a sign that something has been terribly wrong with their organisation for a terribly long time that he instinctively trusts Eggsy over the man who sat at the head of the table, who dictated their customs and drank at their deaths. Or perhaps it's just that Arthur - Chester - is dead, and Eggsy is alive, and he would selfishly prefer to imagine that those who remain are true.

He has the will and the resources to watch Eggsy's back as the three of them save the world together. He doesn't, actually, have it in him right now to watch his own back against Eggsy.

But he doesn't need to.

And they make it through.

There's a certain hilarity to be found in Eggsy's reaction to their success. Merlin raises his eyebrows, mutes the comm, and decides that if Eggsy's going to take up with Swedish royalty, he can make his way home on the Swedish Air Force plane; Merlin, meanwhile, has a Lancelot to retrieve.

He files away in the back of his head, however, the notion that Eggsy's idea of celebrating involves uninhibited sex; he can work with that. Maybe.

He gets a particularly good chance when Eggsy makes it back to headquarters, because in the meantime, Merlin has been tying up other loose ends, and has discovered that one particular end... isn't.

He warns Eggsy before his arrival, of course. Galahad - Harry - is alive, but his recovery is not guaranteed.

Still, their reunion over Harry's unconscious form - a bittersweet reenactment of scenes that feel as though they happened years and worlds ago - is emotional.

A very small part of Merlin wonders if Harry would approve of Merlin's interest in Eggsy, and the way that interest has changed. Realistically, he knows that Harry may not survive to give an opinion.

And the rest of Merlin's thinking goes like this: they're both agents now, they're survivors, he has more than enough regrets already, Eggsy is not Lee, and it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

He establishes rather quickly that Eggsy agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for a possible canon divergence: a conversation between Arthur and Harry implies that Lee was Harry's proposed candidate ("Your little experiment failed" / "That boy saved my life."), however, Harry apologising to Merlin suggests that Merlin was Lee's sponsor instead. I have gone with the latter interpretation and I hope this does not diminish anyone's enjoyment of the story.


End file.
